Much emphasis is being laid today upon education - coordinating, relational, psychological, vocational and equipping. To this must be added the old method of memory training and the attempt either to infuse religion into the mind of the child or to omit it with decision and with purpose. Modern education has been primarily competitive, nationalistic and, therefore, separative. It has trained the child to regard the material values as of major importance, to believe that his particular nation is also of major importance and that every other nation is secondary; it has fed pride and fostered the belief that he, his group and his nation are infinitely superior to other people and peoples. He is taught consequently to be a one-sided person with his world values wrongly adjusted and his attitudes to life distinguished by bias and prejudice. The rudiments of the arts are taught him in order to enable him to function with the needed efficiency in a competitive setting and in his particular vocational environment. To read, to write and to be able to add and do elementary arithmetic are regarded as the minimum requirement; to know something of past events - historical, geographical, literary, philosophical and scientific - are likewise added in many countries and for certain classes of people. Some of the literature of the world is also brought to his attention. [39]

The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced either by national or religious prejudices, serving thus to make a man a citizen of his own country but not a human being with world relations. World citizenship is not emphasized. The teaching imparted stimulates the latent mass consciousness of the child, and evokes the memory (racial and individual) through the impartation of facts - uncorrelated facts - most of them unrelated to daily living. These facts could serve (if used as seed thoughts in meditation and technically employed) to recover from that race consciousness and racial memory, not only national history but past history as well. I mention this in order to emphasize the danger of such undue emphasis upon the past, for if this were done on a large scale it would prove disastrous; it would put a premium on racial and national ideals and objectives and would lead rapidly to racial crystallization and senility - metaphorically speaking. An example of an effort in this direction was seen going on in Germany, and in a lesser way in Italy; it culminated in the Axis. Fortunately, the tide of life in the youth of any nation can be trusted to swing the thought of the race into a better direction than the evocation of past glory, so-called, and the emphasizing of the things which should be left behind.

I would like here to enlarge somewhat upon the interpretation of the much used words (frequently also misused) : culture and civilization. For it is the production of some form of culture - material or spiritual, or material and spiritual - which is the objective of all education. Education is the major agent in the world.